I derive a lot of joy and personal and professional satisfaction from working with couples. As someone said: we do not live in the communities any longer, we live in couples. This situation places an incredible burden on two people to create a relationship that fulfills their many needs which in the past were met by extended family or a larger community. More often than not we enter such relationships without adequate preparation, role models or useful guidance. When problems arise, we are likely to feel alone and very stressed, because our daily life, our safety and our home is threatened.

While most often couples seek counselling naming a particular contentious issue, for example raising kids, dealing with money, sex, relating to in-laws and infidelity, I find it very useful to work with deeper emotional needs for attachment and security. Once these needs can be directly expressed and fulfilled, the specific issue is often no longer a problem or the couple can easily solve it on their own. In this respect I am very much influence by the work of Susan Johnson (see Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy).

Another source of Inspiration for me in this work is Stephen Levin’s “Embracing the Beloved”. His very poetic and at the same time practical work is about relationship as a Spiritual Path. From my personal experience I learned that there is nothing so deeply moving and nothing as nourishing as a deep relationship to our beloved. To the extent we can open to our partners, to that extent we can feel healed, to that extent we can grow out of the narrow confines of our small ego.